Tom Jones rose to the top of the UK singles chart with "It's Not Unusual" 50 years ago today, marking the first time the vocalist would top the charts across the pond. He would only go on to do it twice more, including during 1967 with "Green, Green Grass of Home." Topping the British charts twice is great but it wasn't nearly enough to land a spot on the Official Chart Company's records of the most no. 1 singles during the decade (The OCC began tracking singles during 1969, but has the charts archived by New Music Express and Record Retailer going all the way back to 1952). You may be surprised at some of the acts that landed in the Top 6 spots, including unfamiliar to American readers:
06) The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison and Gerry and The Pacemakers = 3 (TIE)
It should be no surprise that two of the biggest hit-makers from across the pond managed to just crack onto the Official Chart Company's best-of list for the '60s, with both The Everly Brothers and Roy Orbison topping the list three times with hits such as "Walk Right Back" (the former act) and "Oh, Pretty Woman" (the latter act). The more interesting name on the list for unfamiliar American readers might be Gerry and The Pacemakers, a band that got out to the quickest start in British charts history by going to no. 1 with all three of its first singles. The Merseybeat group dropped off significantly from there on out.
05) The Shadows = 5
The Shadows deserve a hand, not only for topping the British charts five times but for doing so with entirely instrumental music. One of the problems was that the group was never meant to have a vocalist, as it served as the backing band for Cliff Richard, another popular British vocalist, so rather than pick up a singer for when it recorded alone, The Shadows just let loose. And it paid off, with tracks such as "Apache" and "Kon-Tiki" still memorable on both sides of the Atlantic, although often recorded by other performers. The band also has the highest turnover rate on this list...having gone through more than a dozen performers during the '60s alone. The band may only be no. 5 on this list but it does have the most weeks on the singles chart during that decade, with 631 total weeks.
04) Cliff Richard = 7
No matter how well The Shadows did, the band's boss just had to go one further. He managed to go to the top of the charts seven times across the decade, between his hits "Please Don't Tease" to "Congratulations" (although he only got up to no. 25 in the United States during that decade and it wasn't with any of his UK no. 1s). It was a massive decade for Richard: He reached the Top 10 in the UK nearly 70 times and 34 of those occasions came during the '60s. We suppose if we counted his no. 1s toward the Twin Shadows count, they'd rise to no. 2 overall on this list. But alas, we're not going to do that. Those 631 weeks we referenced for Richard's backing band a paragraph ago? The first 537 of them were as members of his band, not for the band's solo work.
03) The Rolling Stones = 8
Here's a band that you probably saw coming. The Rolling Stones might not have ever reached the popularity of another band of the same era that will be examined later, but it sure stacked it on between 1964 and 1965, where the group totaled five no. 1 hits. The first two were covers, but folks seemed to eat it up when the Stones finally aired out their own songwriting chops with hits such as "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Paint It, Black" (it's excellent that such songs could be a no. 1 hit at some point in history). Once the band entered its critical peak however—the period where Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street debuted—the hits seemed to dry up despite the positive reviews. The band's last no. 1 in the UK would come with "Honky Tonk Women" during 1969.
02) Elvis Presley = 11
Elvis Presley was truly an American icon but it took more than an ocean to keep him from catching fire over in the UK. He had an unbelievable two-year run during 1956-'57, releasing nine no. 1 singles in the United States. It took the UK a bit longer to catch the fever but eventually "All Shook Up" and "Jailhouse Rock" got them going to no. 1 with The King. Perhaps because they were slow to the trend when Presley was picking up steam, the listeners in the UK carried his legacy farther into the '60s than Americans did. He had "only" six no. 1 singles in the United States during the '60s (compared to 12 during the last four years of the '50s) while he landed 11 no. 1s in the UK. Among the hits that reached the top abroad but not in his homeland is the excellent "(You're The Devil) In Disguise."
01) The Beatles = 19
Was there ever any doubt? The biggest band the world has ever seen was also a perpetual hit-maker and, unlike its "rivals" The Rolling Stones, the group only seemed to get more popular as its songwriting got more progressive.The band was so successful that even its so-called B-sides occasionally ended up at no. 1 ("We Can Work It Out"/"Day Tripper" and "Yellow Submarine"/"Eleanor Rigby" mark the two occasions where both sides of a single reached the top of the charts). The band first reached no. 1 with "From Me To You" during 1963 (although it should be noted that "Love Me Do" reached no. 1 in the U.S. during 1962) and last peaked in 1969 with "The Ballad of John and Yoko."
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